My Favorite Animated Movies

Absolutely Fantastic...
Hayao Miyazaki is a great animator, and this is a great film...
It tells an epic story set in medieval Japan, at the dawn of the Iron Age, when some men still lived in harmony with nature and others were trying to tame and defeat it. It is not a simplistic tale of good and evil, but the story of how humans, forest animals and nature gods all fight for their share of the new emerging order.
It is one of the most inventive and visually stunning animated films I have ever seen...
The artistry is simple but beautifully crafted...examples...
The writhing skin of the boar-monster and the great white wolves which are drawn with such grace...

A fantastic musical animated movie...one of the very best...

As a "dark future science-fiction romance" Vampire Hunter D is set in the year 12,090 A.D., in a post-nuclear holocaust world where vampires, mutants and demons "slither through a world of darkness" (in the words of the film's opening introduction)...
The film has great voice-acting performances especially in regards to the title character, D. It was ground-breaking in that it effectively brought together elements of Gothic horror and dystopian post-apocalyptic science fiction in a classic Western motif...

This one garners respect for its advanced animation techniques...
The storyline features a larger cast than the first film but it doesn't take away from any aspects of the film...

An Incredible animated film in its own...It takes a real look at life for otherwise animated characters, you see real life issuses being brought up and delt with...

Slick, clever and funny...

And I quote...
With the death of Mufasa, the father of the lion cub who will someday be king. The Disney animators know that cute little cartoon characters are not sufficient to manufacture dreams. There have to be dark corners, frightening moments, and ancient archetypes like the crime of regicide. "The Lion King," which is a superbly drawn animated film, is surprisingly solemn in its subject matter, although it was considered to be too intense for very young children...and when one thinks long enough on it...it is rightly so...
Despite the comic relief from the hyenas, the meerkat (Timon) and the warthog (Pumbaa), "The Lion King" is a little more subdued than "Mermaid," "Beauty" and "Aladdin." The central theme is a grim one: A little cub is dispossessed, and feels responsible for the death of its father...
Basically what we have here is a drama, with comedy occasionally lifting the mood. The result is a surprising seriousness; this isn't the mindless romp with cute animals that the ads might lead you to expect. Although the movie may be frightening and depressing to the very young, I think it's positive that "The Lion King" deals with real issues. By processing life's realities in stories, children can prepare themselves for more difficult lessons later on. The saga of Simba, which in its deeply buried origins owes something to Greek tragedy and certainly to "Hamlet," is a learning experience as well as an entertainment...

Robin Williams and animation were born for one another, and in "Aladdin" they finally meet. Williams' speed of comic invention has always been too fast for flesh and blood; the way he flashes in and out of characters can be dizzying...lol ;]
In Disney's "Aladdin," he's liberated at last, playing a genie who has complete freedom over his form - who can instantly be anybody or anything...
All of the film's best moments come from the genie and the other supporting characters, which include a plump little sultan, his scheming vizier, an angry parrot named Iago, a chattering monkey, a friendly flying carpet, and even a magic cave that turns into a fearsome face so that Aladdin has to venture down its throat...

An unexpected beauty, a use of color, form and movement that makes it one of those rare movies where you want to sit in the front row and let the images wash out over you. The movie takes place almost entirely under the sea, in the world of colorful tropical fish--the flora and fauna of a shallow warm-water shelf not far from Australia.

Toy Story" creates a universe out of a couple of kid's bedrooms, a gas station, and a stretch of suburban highway...everything's big when your 6 inches tall right ;)
Its heroes are toys, which come to life when nobody is watching. Its conflict is between an old-fashioned cowboy who has always been a little boy's favorite toy, and the new space ranger who may replace him. The villain is the mean kid next door who takes toys apart and puts them back together again in macabre combinations...cute kid ;/
For the kids in the audience, the movie works because it tells a fun story, contains a lot of humor, and is exciting to watch. Parents appeal lies within the fact that this is the first animated film made entirely by computer graphics, it's creates a three-dimensional reality and freedom of movement that was brand spanking new. The more you know about how the movie was made, the more you respect it...
But to be brief, on a wide scope it's a fantastically simple but provingly wonderful story, proving that you can make new friends while never forgetting your old and best ones...

This film reminds us of the love that a child feels for a favorite toy. "Toy Story 2" knows this, and for younger viewers that knowledge may be the most important thing about the film, more important than the story or the skill of the animation. This is a movie about what you hope your toys do when you're not around, and what you fear. They have lives of their own...

This was awesome, it had more realism than the damn live action flim, which was A FKN DISGARCE!!!!

This was a pleasure to look at...
A woolly mammoth, a sabertooth tiger and a sloth team up to rescue a human baby and return it to its parents...
Doesn't sound to exciting...but it sorta was lol...it was fantastic!
The visual style so distinctive and appealing and the dialogue and the voice-over work by the actors were spot on...

An enchanting animated feature about a boy who makes friends with a robot from outer space. The giant crash-lands on a 1957 night when America is peering up at the speck of Sputnik in the sky, and munches his way through a Maine village, eating TV antennas and cars, until he finds a power plant. That's where young Hogarth Hughes finds him...
Hogarth is a 9-year-old who lives with his single mom and dreams of having a pet. She says they make too much of a mess around the house, little dreaming what a 100-foot robot can get up to... ;]

There is a moment in "The Road to El Dorado" where the two heroes and their profoundly dubious horse are in a rowboat somewhere in the ocean off Central America. It looks like the end.
Then a seabird appears, circles and lands on their boat. This is a good omen. Land must be near. Then the bird drops dead. Bad sign. Then a shark leaps out of the sea and snaps up the bird in one gulp.
Tulio (Kevin Kline)is asked by his long time friend Miguel (Kenneth Branagh), "Tulio, did you ever imagine it would end like this?" to which Tulio responds "The horse is a surprise..."
Piling gag on top of gag is the strategy of the film, creating a bright and zesty animated comedy...

This is not your average family cartoon. "Shrek" is jolly and wicked, filled with sly in-jokes and yet somehow possessing a heart...
Sure the film's technical expertise was great...still, all the craft in the world would not have made this work if the story hadn't been fun and the characters so enjoyable...

It was short and sweet...!

The animation once again is of an astonishing invention and detail...
For a while though the 'castle' itself threatens to upstage everything else that happens in the movie...not that I'm exactly complaining, it looks as if it were hammered together in shop class by wizards inspired by the lumbering, elephantine war machines in "The Empire Strikes Back." The castle is an amazing visual invention, a vast collection of turrets and annexes, protuberances and afterthoughts, which makes its way across the landscape like a turtle in search of a rumble...
Hayao Miyazaki had once again created his particular kind of animated magic, and it was...fantastic...

It's a wonder that it took Disney so long to get to the gods of Greek mythology...
Starting with a Day-Glo Olympian city in the clouds, this new animated feature has something old (mythology), something new (a Pegasus equipped with helicopter blades), something borrowed (a gospel singing group) and something blue (the flaming hair of Hades, which turns red when he gets mad--it works like a mood ring)...tee hee...

Hercules, known as Herc, is a rather different character here than in the pages of ``Bullfinch's Mythology.'' There, you may recall, he murdered his wife and children. Here he's a big cute hunk who's so clumsy he knocks over temples by accident, but you gotta love the guy...
Herc (voice by Tate Donovan), child of a god and a human, who must leave his father, Zeus (Rip Torn), in heaven and toil among the mortals to earn his ticket back to paradise. Herc stumbles through adolescence as the clumsy ``Jerkules'' before a statue of his father comes to life and reads him the rules. His tutor will be the satyr Philoctetes (Danny DeVito), who like all the best movie trainers advises his student to do as he says and not as he does...

Playing on the other team is Hades, Lord of the Underworld, voiced by James Woods with diabolical glee... Hades is assisted by the two little form-shifting sidekicks Pain and Panic (Bobcat Goldthwait and Matt Frewer), who are able to disguise themselves in many different shapes while meddling with Herc's well-being. Another one of Hades' weapons is the curvaceous Megara (Susan Egan), known as Meg, who is assigned to seduce Herc but ends up falling in love with the lug...

This was very original, the character of Experiment 626/Stitch, who is deceptively strong, fast, intelligent, destructive and oh yeah indestructible, was lol hilarious! And who would make a better and eventual partner in crime but an alienated little Hawaiian girl with a preety unique and fiesty spirit of her own...2 thumbs way up!

Spiritually enticing...
The story of Exodus has its parallels in many religions, always with the same result: God chooses one of his peoples over the others. We like these stories because in the one we subscribe to, we are the chosen people, God could have spared man a lot of trouble by casting his net more widely, emphasizing universality rather than tribalism, but there you have it. Moses gives Rameses his chance (free our people and accept our God) and Rameses blows it, with dire results for the Egyptian side...
The film follows Moses (voice of Val Kilmer) from the day when he is plucked from the Nile by the queen (Helen Mirren) to the day when he returns from the mountain with the Ten Commandments. What it emphasizes more than earlier versions is how completely the orphan child is taken into the family of the Pharaoh (Patrick Stewart); he is a well-loved adopted son who becomes the playmate and best friend of Rameses (Ralph Fiennes), the Pharaoh's son. As boys, they get in trouble together (one drag race in chariots, which speed excitingly down collapsing scaffolds, results in the destruction of a temple). And when Rameses is named regent, his first act is to name Moses as royal chief architect...

But something within Moses knows that the Egyptians are not his people. After he happens to meet his real brother and sister, Aaron (Jeff Goldblum) and Miriam (Sandra Bullock), and learns the truth about his heritage, he runs away into the desert. At an oasis, Moses encounters a former slave girl, whom he had helped to escape from the Pharoah's empire, and who is the daughter of the Hebrew high priest Jethro (Danny Glover). While staying with them, Moses hears the voice from the Burning Bush: "I am that I am, the God of your fathers." For Moses, accepting this god means renouncing untold power and riches, and Rameses (now the Pharaoh) is first incredulous, then angered. "I am a Hebrew," Moses sternly informs him, "and the God of the Hebrews came to me and commands that you let my people go." When Rameses disagrees (and doubles the slaves' workload), God unleashes a series of punishments. Fire rains from the sky, locusts descend in clouds, and all the first-born are killed. All leads up to the spectacular parting of the Red Sea, an event made for animation...

The movie is a lot of fun. It has scenes that move through space with a freedom undreamed of in older animated films, and unattainable by any live-action process...there's a sequence where Tarzan helps Jane escape from a killer leopard, and as they hurtle through the treetops and loop the loop on byways of vines, and surf flawlessly across moss covered tree limbs it's like a roller-coaster ride...

What can I say...even Scrat, the ferocious little sabre-toothed squirrel, retains his magic from the original lol xD

This world is inhabited by robots who are human in every respect except that they are not human in any respect, if you follow me. They even have babies. As the movie opens, Herb Copperbottom and his wife are unwrapping their new little boy, who has arrived in a shipping crate, some assembly required. This being a PG-rated movie aimed at the whole family, the robots even have the ability to fart, which is a crucial entertainment requirement of younger children...
But look at the design and artistic execution. Each robot is a unique creation, made of nuts and bolts but also expressing an individual personality, and moving in a way that seems physical and mechanical at the same time...
Of course organics are the last concern of young Rodney Copperbottom (voice of Ewan McGregor), who is born in Rivet City but dreams of a journey to Robot City, where he hopes that a mysterious tycoon named Big Weld will be amazed by his inventions. Rodney's father (Stanley Tucci) is a dishwasher (the appliance is built right into his midsection), and Rodney has invented a tiny helicopter robot that can whiz around the kitchen, stacking plates and silverware. What the restaurant serves on the plates I will leave to your imagination...

A nearly flawless piece of popular art...I would be looking forward to a sequal if possible...Remy is such a loveable and charming character, and the story so simple and innocent...it makes for a great family film...2 thumbs up :)

A great futuristic film...

Although only coming out a month prior to A Bug's life, I don't think it took anything away from the flim, but in fact helped it and itself by demonstrating how many dramatic and comedic possibilities can be found in an anthill...
Although this film in itself deals with slightly more complex themes, including conformity and war, and its imagery is less colorful and more realistic; for example, the ants' coloration is orange-brown rather than bright blue and the ants in Antz have six extremities (four legs and two arms) rather than the more human-like four. The film shows the transition of the colony from a dictatorship to a democracy. General Mandible's plan to "rinse away all the filth from our gutters" (the colony) is reminiscent of Adolf Hitler's "Final Solution."...
"Antz" has a more sophisticated sensibility and could play for adults attending by themselves...

One has to enjoy the use of animation to visualize a world that otherwise could not be seen in live action and could not be created with special effects...
The story, about an ant colony that frees itself from slavery to grasshoppers, is similar in some ways to "Antz," but it's aimed at a broader audience and lacks the in-jokes...
"A Bug's Life" is more clearly intended as a family film...

A cool animated movie with a historical foreground...

The beauty of this film lies in the message...
The message of "Pocahontas" is that arriving settlers despoiled the forests and imposed their own version of civilization, whether or not it was wanted. Governor Ratcliffe, the blustering leader of the Virginia Company, is shown gleefully using cannons to level forests. And when the settlers open fire on the Indians, they retaliate by capturing John Smith and then prepare to execute him. Only Pocahontas, who can empathize with both sides, can save either side from destruction...